The German, the Swiss and the US Fiscal Policy Reaction to the Financial Crisis: Comparing Education and Corporate Policies from an Adapted Varieties of Capitalism Perspective

Abstract

This paper looks at education and corporate coordination-policy outcomes within the fiscal stimulus packages of Germany, the USA, and Switzerland during the financial crisis of 2008/2009. The paper investigates assumptions derived by the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) school while remaining open to the potential influence of political actors carrying out and/or influencing the policy making process. We show that, while the size of the fiscal stimulus packages cannot be explained by VoC logic, the composition of the fiscal stimulus packages is largely in line with the theoretical expectations of an adapted VoC framework. The findings underline the point that certain shortcomings of VoC theory only become apparent when political processes are included in the empirical verifications of central claims, which supports the need for using an adapted version of the VoC framework that also accounts for power resources.